San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Optimer, Pfenex, OncoSec, & More

this strategically relevant product has been sought for a number of years, and with continued government support and partnership we are confident Pfenex can deliver that solution.”

—Venture investors provided $241.5 million to 20 companies in the San Diego area during the third quarter that ended June 30, according to data from the latest MoneyTree Report. That’s an 11 percent increase over the $217.8 million that VCs invested in 24 deals during the same quarter last year. Almost $152 million, or 62 percent of all venture funding during the quarter, went to San Diego life sciences companies—including $50.1 million for Aragon Pharmaceuticals and $35.2 million for Tandem Diabetes Care. The MoneyTree Report was released by the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers, using data from Thomson Reuters

—San Diego stem cell pioneer Fate Therapeutics named former Amylin Pharmaceuticals R&D executive Christian Weyer as CEO, about 20 months after CEO Paul Grayson left the high-profile startup. The company, founded by leading scientists at Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Washington, adopted a new strategy last year. Bill Rastetter, a Venrock partner who was named interim CEO in November, will remain chairman of Fate’s board. At Amylin, Weyer contributed to the development, approval, and commercialization of several first-in-class diabetes medicines.

—San Diego’s OncoSec Medical, which has been developing an electroporation delivery system for chemotherapy treatments for solid tumor cancers, said it has received the European community’s regulatory approval. The company says authorization to use the CE mark means it can market its proprietary gene and drug technology in the European Economic Area (EEA).

—Stan Fleming, the longtime managing partner at San Diego’s Forward Ventures, is raising funding for a separate investment fund called Forward Medical Science Partners, according to a Dow Jones report. Fleming told the wire service he’s raising $100 million to $200 million, and plans to secure rights to individual drugs that can be developed and then sold.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.